


Guigemar

by Vadianna



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (Sinjir's former 'interrogation' techniques), (it's skippable), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Advice, Bad Decisions, background Ben Solo, brief discussion of canon-typical violence, rated T for the interrogation techniques, years before their relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 09:49:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16302884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vadianna/pseuds/Vadianna
Summary: Two years ago, Arkanis came under Imperial control, and Armitage Hux was rescued when the Imperial Academy fell.  He remains silent, refusing to speak a word, until at age seven he meets and picks a fight with five-year-old Ben Solo.The next day, Republican Adviser Sinjir Rath Velus picks Armitage up from school and attempts to start a conversation, one ex-Imperial to another. Armitage's silence has kept him isolated, and Sinjir tries to help.





	Guigemar

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Chevrefoil](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13504977) by [Vadianna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vadianna/pseuds/Vadianna). 



> A short fic, because Sinjir would be a disaster mentor and perfect for Hux.
> 
> This is related to a story included in [Chapter 19 of Chevrefoil](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13504977/chapters/37965095). You won't want to read this if you plan on reading that fic, but you also don't have to read Chevrefoil to enjoy this. The only other relevant detail is that Mon Mothma adopted Hux when he was six, and he started school in the New Republic later due to his refusal to speak. Sinjir Rath Velus is one of Mon Mothma's lead advisers from _Aftermath_.
> 
> If you don't want to know about Sinjir's interrogation techniques, stop reading at "The next part, the part that logically followed" and skip the next four paragraphs. Resume reading at "He pinched the skin." Sinjir doesn't really say anything that isn't in the Aftermath novels, but he is trying to scare Armitage into speaking, and it's a little intense. He also gives terrible advice at the end, but in the spirit of curbing bad behavior. Don't listen to Sinjir.

Among the crowd of young children laughing and playing outside the school, Armitage Hux stood out starkly, far too easy to single out, and for all the wrong reasons.

It wasn’t just that the other children were still avoiding him, that Armitage was standing by himself far away from the others. It wasn’t that he was small, looking uncomfortably swamped in his light blue blazer and loose-fitting white pants. It wasn’t that he still kept his hair in an unsightly short Academy style, or that he still had that Imperial pallor that Sinjir associated with high-ranking officers.

It was all of that together, along with his averted glare, his scowl, his crossed arms. The fact that he still wasn’t talking to anyone. Every part of his attitude and appearance demanded that he be left alone.

Sinjir slid out of the transport as it came to a stop in front of the school, always eager to disappoint him in that regard.

“Armitage!” he called in an artificially cheerful tone of voice. “Did you have a good day at school? Assault any toddlers during your lunch break?”

Armitage peered up at him, then stretched, looking behind Sinjir at the transport. Sinjir glanced back quickly, feigning surprise.

“Oh. Mon told me she doesn’t love you anymore. We’re actually going to the nearest Imperial outpost. I’m supposed to leave you there with one of those ration bars. You know the ones.”

Armitage ignored him, pushing past Sinjir to climb into the transport. Sinjir entered behind him, closing the door and programming the destination for the droid pilot.

“You know, your mom might actually kill me if she found out I talked to you like that.” He stared at the ceiling as the transport pulled smoothly into traffic, considering the matter seriously for a moment. “Usually I do that kind of thing for her. Not murder,” he waved that away, “but other things. Fairly nasty.”

Armitage, as usual, was staring straight ahead, pretending to ignore him.  Sinjir leaned in closer. “In fact, the serene, generous Mon Mothma might strangle me with her bare hands if she thought I was a bad influence on you. But lucky for me, she’ll never find out. Who’s going to tell her? You?”

When Armitage still didn’t react, Sinjir sighed, leaning back in his seat. “Nothing? Really? Not even to get me in trouble? You’re not very creative.”

Matching wits with a silent seven-year-old was beneath him, so Sinjir took out his comm, scanning through his messages. But he had lost the knack for having a real job long ago, and couldn’t pretend the messages were interesting even for the sake of annoying Armitage. He stowed it after a few restless minutes.

“I heard that you finally spoke over the weekend. You know, for all that your mom is re-organizing the entire galactic government, and has been for over twenty years, the only thing she really wants now is for you to say something to her. Anything. Even something shitty.”

Armitage gave no response to that, either. But he also didn’t have his datapad out, which was proof enough that Sinjir was being at least mildly annoying.

“So it was the Organa kid that finally got you to talk, right? And you almost beat him to death for it. That seems fair. He probably deserved it.”

At that, Armitage finally turned to study him. It was the most interest he’d ever shown in Sinjir. Encouraged, Sinjir continued.

“What? Do you think it’s a secret that he’s a little terror? Anybody that's met him can tell. I don’t know how those two wound up with a kid like that.” He paused. “It makes as much sense as Mon Mothma’s kid refusing to speak to her.”

Armitage quickly turned to face the front again, scowling.

“Now that I know you can, I’m afraid I’m going to have to force you to talk regularly. I can always get people to talk. It’s kind of my thing.”

The next part, the part that logically followed, was certainly not for children. But Sinjir's thing _was_ getting people to talk, and he was almost sure this would work, one way or another. He reached out, gently taking one of Armitage’s wrists and stroking a thumb over his middle finger. He pitched his voice lower.

“Deprivation is a good first step. I’d withhold food, but give you water. You can live a long time on just water. That will break most people. And you? You’re small, you’d go faster than most.”

He squeezed Armitage’s little wrist for emphasis. Armitage turned to look at him again, curious. Attentive. So of course Sinjir continued, keeping his voice low.

“In my previous career, sometimes the job needed done fast. And some people would rather starve to death than talk. You could always tell. So. Basics. I would start small, always with something that could heal easily. It would make them believe they could leave at the end.” He ran his thumb down Armitage’s middle finger again, to the tip, stroking the edge of his nail. Armitage always kept his nails trimmed as short as possible. Sinjir pressed his own thumbnail under the short length of Armitage’s middle fingernail. Not hard enough to hurt, just a light pressure.

“My preference was for the nails. I’d pull them off. Sometimes all at once, before I even asked a question. Sometimes one at a time, if I thought the person would give me what I wanted that way. There were... many factors. And some people deserved much worse.” He stroked Armitage’s finger again, made sure to hold Armitage’s gaze. “I’d start breaking fingers after that. I always did that one by one. I'd start with the smallest finger of the right hand first, the joints, and then the bones in between. I’d do the one on the left, too.” He tugged gently on Armitage’s pinky finger. “And go on from there. Sometimes I’d watch and see which fingers they moved the most, and do those next. Index finger, thumb.”

He pinched the skin between Armitage’s finger and thumb, then sat back in his seat, speaking in a normal tone of voice again. “Other things. I always got them to talk, though.”

Once it was out, Sinjir regretted it. Why was he like this? Why did he need to scare the son of the head of state? Then again, who would ever find out? Would Armitage tell them?

Armitage looked at his own hand, suspended in the air where Sinjir had been holding it, then to Sinjir’s hand, resting on the seat.

Then, incredibly, he opened his mouth and spoke. “Are you a torturer?”

“Stars, Armitage. Really? Two years of silence, and that’s the first thing you say?”

Armitage glared at him.

“Yes, I tortured people.” He threw his hands up. “Excellent deduction. Consider a career as a detective.”

“Do you torture people for… for… the rebels?”

“In case you haven’t noticed, they aren’t rebels anymore. They won.” He considered the question for a moment, and then evaded. “I used to be a Loyalty Officer. So I tortured people for the Empire. Mostly bad Imperial officers.”

Armitage recoiled at that, all the way against the opposite door of the transport. He looked afraid.

“Yeah, that’s the look. I deserve that.” He turned, staring out the window, thinking over what Armitage had asked. “Do you think you’re a bad Imperial, Armitage?”

“I live here. With the rebels,” he said stiffly.

“What about your dad?” he asked, turning back to give Armitage a considering look. “He ran the Imperial Academy, mass-produced baby officers like you, and he used a kid as a shield to save himself. Do you think I should go punish him?”

Armitage’s face grew very red at that, his scowl turning into something more vulnerable. Sinjir cursed himself. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought up that particular trauma, the thing that made Armitage silent in the first place, immediately after he'd started talking again.

But to his surprise, Armitage replied. “He's not a bad Imperial. He went with the Empire, to bring it back.”

Sinjir considered him again, his opinion of Armitage slowly shifting as the situation became clearer. “Is that what they told you they were doing?”

Armitage nodded, still looking as if he would cry.

“Take it from me,” he said, looking back out the window at Hanna City, laid out like a painting below them. “I’ve seen some things. I was there when the Empire fell. I watched it. It's never coming back. Wherever your father went, he's not coming back either.” He paused, hating that Armitage was too much like him, even so young. But that was how the Imperial Academies worked. Sinjir knew that. They made you loyal, and they made everyone the same. “It goes easier after you realize it’s not coming back. You can stop worrying about it after that.”

The transport paused as it went through the security procedures for Mon Mothma’s compound. Another minute, and it came to a smooth stop, the droid driver announcing their destination.

Sinjir didn’t immediately get out. He continued to stare out the window as he asked his next question.

“Armitage, do you think I’m a bad Imperial?”

“Yes. I think you’re a bad man.”

His little voice was scratchy and barely used. He sounded like a sick kid. He meant every word. Sinjir turned to him, beaming insincerely.

“Then you aren’t as stupid as we thought. Come here.” He offered his hand, opening the door with the other and pulling Armitage out. They started up the walk to the house in the pleasant late afternoon sun, the transport pulling silently away behind them.

“Sinjir? Can you teach me to do what you do?”

Sinjir rolled his eyes. “You have an empathy streak a kilometer wide. Unsurprising.” He looked down at Armitage, who was studying him with a neutral expression again. Armitage hadn't looked so interested in anything since he'd left the Republic quarantine prison last year.

Sinjir sighed. “Fine. But you will call me Loyalty Officer Velus.”

Armitage’s posture stiffened, and his walk changed to something more formal. His little face grew grave. “Yes, sir.”

Part of Sinjir felt bad for playing off Armitage’s Imperial training. Armitage would do better to forget it.

Then again, Sinjir never had.

He made his voice sharper, more like an order. “But only when we’re alone. You’ll never speak of this to another person. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

Sinjir faced forward, placing his palm against the door’s biometric scanner. “And you can’t beat up the kids at school. This isn’t the Imperial Academy. Understood?”

Armitage hesitated. The door sprang open, and Sinjir glanced down at him.

“Yes, sir,” he mumbled, looking unhappy about it.

“Those kids are soft. They probably don’t even know how to kill another being. Do you?”

“Yes, sir. For humans the same height, approach from behind, lock an arm around the neck and twist the head until broken. Munn can be taken down with several sharp blows to the chest to stop their hearts. Mon Calamari will suffocate if you-”

“Good to know that the toddler program is as sharp as ever,” Sinjir interrupted. Armitage had recited the lessons rote. They sounded odd coming from a seven-year-old, but that was just the program. Sinjir had almost forgotten.

“I have this, too,” Armitage added, flexing his right wrist and making a small monomolecular blade appear in his hand. He beamed proudly up at Sinjir. “A stab wound to the liver or kidney will incapacitate a full-grown adult and eventually prove fatal.”

Sinjir dropped Armitage’s other hand, glancing quickly around to make sure they were alone. He knelt, examining the small blade. “Where did you get this?”

Armitage’s face went blank again. He flexed his wrist, and the blade disappeared. “None of your business.”

He studied Armitage’s now-empty palm, imagined the easily-concealed wrist launcher that was strapped to his arm. Sinjir wanted to look at it. Armitage would have build it himself, they didn’t have that kind of tech lying around Chandrila. For a seven-year-old, that was very impressive.

“Look, I know you won’t hurt yourself with that. And if I take it, you’ll probably just get another one from-” he waved vaguely. “I don’t want to know. But don’t show anyone else. If you didn’t like prison before, you definitely won’t like it if they think you deserve it.”

Sinjir frowned, then studied Armitage’s face again, making sure to hold his gaze. “Don’t stab anyone, either. Not unless they’re trying to kidnap you. Even if you want to.” Armitage remained silent, and Sinjir continued. “You can think about it. You can’t help thinking about it after the lessons, I know that. Did you learn about impulse control before you left the Academy?”

Armitage shook his head.

“You’ll want to hurt people sometimes. It may seem like the right thing to do. And they may even deserve it. But do you know what’s always better?”

Armitage shook his head again. Sinjir had his full attention.

“Revenge. Delayed to when they least expect it. It’s always better. Physical pain is the least of what you can do to someone. Take it from me. Do you understand, Cadet Hux?”

Armitage nodded gravely. Sinjir stood.

“That’s impulse control. Keeping that little knife to yourself even when you want to use it.” He turned, walking into the kitchen. He needed a drink. Sinjir should have known it would be like this when Armitage finally spoke.

“That’s your first lesson,” he said, peering into a cabinet and raising his voice so Armitage could hear him from the other room. “And if you ever do want to use that knife, come find me. We’ll work out something together.” He closed the cabinet, turned, and found that Armitage had followed him into the kitchen. Odd, since he always fled to his room once he was dismissed after school. 

Sinjir grinned, deciding to continue the lesson. “Now, what I’m about to teach you? You aren’t allowed to use it on anyone but Ben Solo. Is that understood?”

Armitage’s expression brightened at that.

“He’s not in your classes, and definitely deserves it. That kid’s a little monster. He won’t know what hit him, I promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> Important note: Sinjir teaches Armitage a prank, not an actual interrogation technique.


End file.
